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- Sep 17, 2008
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And this will have some pretty far reaching consequences as it spans decades
U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “As he has now admitted, Gabriel Letizia schemed for decades to defraud customers of his laboratory and caused sunscreens and other consumer products to be sold and marketed to consumers on the basis of false laboratory testing reports. Letizia’s guilty plea underscores that my Office will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to investigate and prosecute fraud and endangerment in the consumer products testing industry.”
According to the allegations contained in the Second Superseding Information, publicly available information, court filings, and statements made during the plea proceedings:
LETIZIA is the owner and executive director of AMA, a consumer products testing company in Rockland County, New York. David Winne served as AMA’s technical director, Mayya Tatsene served as AMA’s clinical laboratory director, Patrycja Wojtowicz served as AMA’s associate director of clinical studies, and Kaitlyn Gold served as AMA’s supervising laboratory technician. AMA tested the safety and efficacy of cosmetics, sunscreens and other products on specified numbers of volunteer panelists for consumer products companies.
From 1987 through April 2017, LETIZIA and his co-conspirators defrauded AMA’s customers of more than $46 million by testing products on materially lower numbers of panelists than the numbers specified and paid for by AMA’s customers. LETIZIA, and AMA employees acting under his direction, sent the customers fraudulent reports, which falsely represented that AMA had tested the products on the number of panelists specified by the customers, causing the introduction of misbranded products into interstate commerce.
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This is scary. Thats a whole lot of money and I wonder what was the products and who were the companies???
Audrey Strauss, United States Attorney for the Southern District of
FDA OCI, Gabriel Letizia, owner, executive director, AMA Laboratories, consumer products testing company, New York City, plea, guilty, misbranded, David Winne, Mayya Tatsene, Patrycja Wojtowicz, Kaitlyn Gold, Rockland County NY, fraudulent reports, fewer panelists,www.fda.gov